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Last time, I dropped a citadel right in Pulias’s grill. Methinks that miffed he be.
U mad, bro?
Uh, actually, England will be intimidated. And you’ll like it.
Land Ironclads? Let’s upgrade
No more ka-chunkadas. Time to boost the troops for what we all know is coming.
We get all kinds of games sent to us, along with the ones we pick up one our own. Some good, some bad, some gorgeous, some not so much. We try – we really do try – to get to all of them for review purposes, but it doesn’t always happen. There’s a reason I’ve got a weekly blurb here called “What I’m doing this week when I should be playing games”. Moreover, when I play a game for review, I want to play it multiple times to ensure that the review I’m writing is accurate based on how the game is balanced, and how it plays over time – especially if replayability is one of the key factors we want to discuss.
Among the reasons I’ve made it a point to start republishing a bunch of the ‘classic reviews’ are that I don’t want my reviews to be dependent on someone else’s site continuing to exist, as well as wanting folks to be able to find opinions on older games that they may want to take for a spin. Additionally, many of those older reviews (some of which I’m going to get to soon) were longer borderline-investigative-journalism pieces that really dug into the games through repeated plays. That was a lot easier when I was in grad school. Working 3 different teaching jobs, plus being the editorial director here, makes all that a lot tougher.
So, this episode of Tracer Rounds is designed to catch up on those reviews – with a twist.
I’ve been thinking a lot about education lately, perhaps a little too much. It’s no real secret that wargamers tend to be over educated, but let’s face it, for many of us school was more of a formality than anything. Most of us weren’t the most studious of pupils, and a lot of our classes were merely checking the box on something we could breeze through in our sleep.
But we’re not the key consumers in the American education system either. And that’s the struggle that I’m wrestling with right now as I have two kids in public schools and I am teaching at several very different colleges. What this adds up to is that my thoughts on this are rather disjointed, but I don’t feel like writing a book to fully explore every one of them, so this is going to be a bit of a brain dump of several different concepts all related to education. Please bear with me and I hope it comes out to a coherent whole by the time I’m done (but let’s face it, the odds of that are pretty slim).
First off, I’m really wrestling with the issue of what we expect education to accomplish. There is certainly an underlying shared experiential component to our education system, as if it’s a massive continental-wide team building exercise for 12-year-olds. To that end, the shared pain and sacrifice somewhat makes sense. Ostensibly, the public education system in the US is designed to turn out citizens with a minimal set of survival skills for the rest of their lives. That said, it’s hard to make the case that it’s succeeding in that regard. There are so many minimally-necessary skills that are not taught, or even touched on (balancing a checkbook, typing, managing a credit score, how to be fucking polite in public!), that it’s not insane to wonder if we should completely jettison the current model and rebuild from the ground up. However, if it’s all just skill building for future societal needs, then we are doing our students a serious service by failing to intellectually engage them. Subjects such as history and literature serve vital functions in providing context in today’s society, as well as important emotional engagement points for many students, even if they do not have an immediate tie into any future career endeavor.
Hull Breach!: In Defiance of Dictators Card Game (Not-So-Broken Games)
$10k of $33k, ends 17 April 2016
We’ve been tracking the Hull Breach gang for a while, going back to 2013 (https://grogheads.com/?p=3199), so now that their new release is hitting Kickstarter, of course we’re going to throw them some love! It’s a deck-builder type of game, with tactical gameplay that depends on how well you can structure and deploy your assets. Your home base (“station”) needs your protection, and you attack with all variety of ships, marines, and special weapons. Mixing and matching with other boxes lets you customize your deck; fret not, though, as it’s not a collectible game, just a customizable one. The new box includes enhanced rules for team play, new victory conditions, and a streamlined rulebook, to go with a truckload of new cards. Launch for their Kickstarter page and fire off your pledge.
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Last session, the war against Pulias to our north came and went. And oh yeah, I’ve got spies that I needed to send.
Freakin’ Canadians
I guess I’m not building a road in that direction. And why the heck do we have archers in a steampunk scenario?
Not just any engineer, a great engineer!
Yeah, it’s not any funnier when we move it out of Africa.